(Or translated, the bishopric, cookies, my half-birthday, and the best call of my life)
We are officially the WARD of Las Palmas!!! We got a bishopric yesterday and it´s so exciting! I don´t really know our new bishop at all, but one of his counselors is a really awesome young and recently married RM from El Salvador who we have come to lessons with us a lot. He´s great, and I know that the new bishopric will do a wonderful job!
This week we had an AWESOME district meeting in which the Buhlers taught about good teaching skills. It was so powerful, especially since just the day before Hermana Fowers and I had been trying to figure out what we needed to do to have better lessons. We ended up having a really good, really basic lesson with Orlando about the Book of Mormon and the importance of the message of THIS gospel, and the next time we met with him, we could just see that the spirit in him had changed. He had read the chapter we had left for him to read, he was praying, and he just had a new enthusiasm that hadn´t been there before to learn about the gospel.
We also had a wonderful lesson with the Buhlers and Yerlandy and Isora about the commandments to pray, read the scriptures, and keep the Sabbath Day holy. Hermana Buhler said in district meeting that one of the things we really lacked in lessons was enthusiasm, and Elder Buhler said that when we extend commitments, we need to help the investigators see why that specific commitment will help them come closer to Christ. Then we had that lesson with them, and I was focusing really hard on doing those things. And the lesson was AMAZING. We talked about the commandments, about why we have them, and about what they help us do. We talked about Christ´s love for us, and about how those three things especially draw us nearer to His love. I felt the Spirit so strongly and as I bore my testimony, I almost started crying (which DOES NOT happen to me in lessons.)
Also, I received the best phone call of my life in which Yerlandy CALLED ME. Those of you who don´t live in Spain, you don´t understand how big of a deal that is. There´s something here called "saldo" which is minutes on your phone, and NO ONE has saldo. Our investigators never EVER call us because no one has enough money to put minutes on their phone or respond to text messages. So the fact that Yerlandy called me was in and of itself a miracle because that means she used her priceless saldo to call us. But even better than that was the context of the call. I answered and she said, "Hey, I just got back from working with my mom and I´m going to read the Book of Mormon. I really want to study about baptism. Is there a specific chapter I should read that talks about baptism? I almost fell over right there on the spot, but I somehow managed to fumble around in my bag and tell her the page number of Mosiah 18. That was so awesome to me! She´s not entirely sure that the church is true, or that she feels completely ready to get baptized, but I know she will feel that by her fecha on the 9th because she´s doing her part! She is putting in the effort to read and to pray and that is how she will get an answer. It was amazing for me to get that call because that is exactly the recipe for how to receive a testimony. I´m SO excited to see how she continues to progress.
Luis was super busy this week because his brother came from Cuba to visit, but he´s been reading and praying still and Yerlandy said yesterday that he´s more prepared than she is to get baptized.
Other things this week...our chapel got robbed! We´re pretty sure someone came in while we were doing our FHE in the chapel and hid in a storage closet until we left and locked up, then they went through and broke a few things and stole a computer and got out the back where they had to climb over a wall. It was crazy and that day we couldn´t go into the church because the police had to come do an inspection, but nothing´s too badly damaged and a lot of the technology stuff like the video conference cameras and the projecter were untouched. (That day was also coincidentally my half-birthday and Hermana Fowers sang me happy half-birthday in Spanish on the bus.)
Also on Friday we were really bored waiting for the bus and so we ran over to the store and bought a sleeve of cookies which we shared with all our investigators and menos activos the rest of the day. It was really funny because Hermana Fowers had them in her bag and at the end of the lesson she would just pull them out and everyone´s faces were so confused because they had been expecting her to pull out scriptures or something and it was cookies instead.
And last night we went to the coolest FHE with Raquel and Franklyn, who are a married couple in their 40s or 50s and don´t have any kids. So once a week they have an FHE with all the YSAs who are the only members in their families. There were at least 5 YSAs there, and they have them rotate in teaching the lesson. I loved seeing them do that, because it´s so important that those recent converts have FHE every week and even if they can´t do it with their own family, they can do it with this part of their ward family! Most of the ones there got baptized within the last 2 years, and the lesson was very profound and spiritual and incredibly powerful. That house was filled with love for the Lord and for one another. I absolutely loved being able to go there yesterday.
I really love being here right now. I LOVE my companion and Las Palmas and I love the Lord. We´ve been listening to priesthood session for our companionship study and I just listened this morning to President Uchtdorf´s talk. I felt like it was written just for me (minus the references to the priesthood!) We probably won´t get our new conference Liahona for a really long time, so for the moment I´ll have to content myself with listening from my comp´s iPod. :)
Please keep up your prayers. We can see the miracles they work every day!
¡Los quiero mucho!
Hermana Lara Schaumann
No comments:
Post a Comment